A manuscript shortlisted for the inaugural edition of the Prototype Prize, 2024, a eulogy to the sonic influence and cultural inferences of the sound of the cicada. A train of thought on the multiform significations and significance of the cicada’s buzz and hum; a dissection and deconstruction of the insect as emblem; a wild and associative suite of fragments on the evocations of background noise when brought to the fore.


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Prior to its incarnation as a ‘Yellowjacket,’ Thesiger-Meacham’s Audible Heat began as a work for the radio—a commission for the 2023 Radophrenia  programme at Glasgow’s Centre for Conteporary Arts. As a marker for the radiophonic history of this work, the Tenement Press edition of Audible Heat publishes in tandem with a CD release from WORLD SERVICE, a Glasgow-based record label for direct-to-disc avant-radio works.





Milo Thesiger-Meacham’s Audible Heat is an extended documentary, a fitful academic essay, a mass-media probe, an idiosyncratic piece of travel writing, a densely illustrated sound-art montage, and a deep dive into man’s complex relations with the seemingly eternal sound of the cicada as ‘audible heat’ in human consciousness.    
        Featuring original music and field recordings, and spoken contributions by writer and translator Cristina Viti and filmmaker Ahmed Yassin Aldaradji, Audible Heat ranges across continents, embracing Greek tongue twisters, the poetry of Ibn Quzmān and Harry Crosby, African-American mathematician Benjamin Banneker’s lost wooden clock, Plato’s Phaedrus, cicadas on the film sets of Sergio Leone’s ‘Spaghetti Westerns,’ the body language of Clint Eastwood, the apocalyptic premonitions of the Wampanoag, Geronimo’s hatred of telegraphy, and botanist Donald C. Peattie’s terror of the inescapable buzz of mortality. 





Audible Heat is read by 
Milo Thesiger-Meacham, 
& features original contributions 
from Cristina Viti; 
Ahmed Yassin Aldaradji;
Dr Gene Kritsky; 
Dr Douglas Yanega;
& Matthias Loibner. 

The work was recorded, produced 
& scored by Milo Thesiger-Meacham,
2023 / 2024.

Audible Heat was first broadcast via 
the temporary Radiophrenia channel 
(radiophrenia.scot), September 2023; 
& via Resonance Extra (resonance.extra),
November 2023.

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